Part I. Taste resolved into its simple principles

Section II. Of the sense or taste of grandeur and sublimity

Grandeur or sublimity gives us a still higher and nobler pleasure, by means of a sense appropriated to the perception of it; while meanness renders any object, to which it adheres, disagreeable and distasteful. Objects are sublime, which possess quantity or amplitude, and simplicity in conjunction.

Considerable magnitude or largeness of extension, in objects capable of it, is necessary to produce sublimity. It is not on a small rivulet, however transparent and beautifully winding; it is not on a narrow valley, though variegated with flowers of a thousand pleasing hues; it is not on a little hill, though clothed with the most delightful verdure, that we bestow the epithet sublime: but on the Alps, the Nile, the ocean, the wide expanse of heaven, or the immensity of space uniformly extended, without limit or termination.

We always contemplate objects and ideas with a disposition similar to their nature. When a large object is presented, the mind expands itself to the extent of that object, and is filled with one grand sensation, which totally possessing it, composes it into a solemn sedateness, and strikes it with deep silent wonder and admiration: it finds such a difficulty in spreading itself to the dimensions of its object, as enlivens and invigorates its frame: and having overcome the opposition which this occasions, it sometimes imagines itself present in every part of the scene, which it contemplates; and, from the sense of this immensity, feels a noble pride, and entertains a lofty conception of its own capacity.